The season of summer parties is almost upon us. Cramped around tables, scooping Ottolenghi-inspired dishes onto our plates, quaffing endless glasses of pinot – the requirement to be interesting can sometimes feel like an obligation too far.
Podcasts might just be the answer to this demand on a stretched brain. Nuggets of information parcelled up like the delicious spanakopita bites your host is proffering. And beyond the podcasts that dominate the dead-eyed world of social media – where self-described “mentality monsters” teach you how to be a millionaire, or wellness gurus shill the latest bowel-cleansing fad diet – there are shows that are genuinely nourishing. Here, to do the intellectual heavy lifting for you (and simply give you something good to talk about), are the 14 podcasts that will transform you into the perfect dinner party guest.
No Such Thing as a Fish
One of my favourite small-talk pastimes is to relay information I’ve learned listening to No Such Thing as a Fish, the long-running spin-off podcast from the QI writers’ room. It is a slightly risky strategy: should the person you’re addressing happen to be an avid follower, then you will be exposed as a fraud. But with each episode containing brain-teasing snacks – from Proustian sausage rolls to bovine artificial insemination – it’s essential ice-breaking fodder. Added tip: if you’ve ascertained that you’re amidst a NSTAAF crowd, try deploying something from Dan Schreiber’s We Can Be Weirdos instead.
Decoder Ring
Imagine you’re at a dinner party and your host brings out a delicious tiramisu. This is a perfect opportunity to tell them that, despite seeming to be the quintessence of Italian cuisine, tiramisu was probably invented in the 1970s. It is this sort of baller myth-busting that Willa Paskin excels at in her pop cultural deep dive, Decoder Ring. Episodes on why the Canadian province of Alberta has no rats, or how the movie Sideways impacted global merlot sales, are essential.
Ologies
Almost every subject on the earth – from butterflies and slugs to sex and death – has its own “ology”. A field of study where impassioned researchers turn something niche into their lives’ work. This is what science writer Alie Ward showcases in Ologies. Sometimes eccentric, often engaging, Ologies takes you to places you’d never considered before and makes a cogent argument for them as the centre of their own little universe.
The Gatekeepers
In 2024, most of the big news topics are off the table for polite conversation, so the role of Big Tech is perhaps the safest gambit for discussing the issues of the day. The Gatekeepers, a BBC series fronted by Jamie Bartlett of The Missing Cryptoqueen fame, looks at the amount of social responsibility we’ve outsourced to a collection of monolithic, and privately owned, digital “gatekeepers”. Other shows, like The Guardian’s Black Box, focus on AI; The Gatekeepers pulls back the lens to ask how we got here.
Hard Fork
On that note, if you want to stay abreast of the big developments in technology, without getting lost in a sea of technical jargon, a good place to start is Hard Fork from The New York Times. Hosted by Casey Newton and Kevin Roose, there are few more accessible (but unpatronising) weekly rundowns of everything from machine learning to robotics. And there will be plenty of titbits to help you terrify your companions. For a more acerbic view, try Pivot, which brings together a left-leaning legend of tech journalism, Kara Swisher, and loud-mouthed investment guru Scott Galloway, to discuss what the hell’s going on in the world.
The Briefing Room
Anything that airs predominantly on radio is a bit of a cheat as a podcast selection, but David Aaronovitch’s Radio 4 show is one of the few pieces of programming that embraces the global nature of politics and social change. There are others – like The Election Tricycle and From Our Own Correspondent – but Aaronovitch is a consistently curious host and the contributors to the show top-notch. In such a crucial election year, a regular Radio 4 combo of The Briefing Room, for global affairs, and The Today Podcast, for domestic coverage, will leave you nattering with the confidence of an Old Etonian.
Planet Money
There are not many finance shows that cater to the lay listener, but NPR’s long-running (and very American) look at the ebbs and flows of macroeconomics is one of them. Understanding the interaction between interest rates and inflation, separating your monopolies from your oligopolies, knowing who’s pulling the strings at the Federal Reserve: all of these things will make you a tremendous bore. But you’ll also get to feel a smug sense of satisfaction as you explain, to those around you, the invisible currents that dictate the world’s climate.
The Story of Classical
There’s nothing quite like classical music for making people feel ignorant. But the converse of this is that even the smallest amount of knowledge – getting, for example, one in 20 of the music starters on University Challenge right – will make you seem terribly erudite. Apple Music’s The Story of Classical is a good place to start boning up. While it’s not as charming as Joanna Lumley & The Maestro (where the AbFab actress discusses music with her husband, the conductor Stephen Barlow) the no frills, era-by-era approach makes the information easily digestible.
You Must Remember This
Nobody needs help unriddling the mysteries of the latest Marvel snoozefest, or yet another deep dive into the lyrical quagmire that is Taylor Swift. Instead, why not try You Must Remember This, a voyage into Hollywood’s Golden Age. Hosted by Karina Longworth, it has long been a champion of cinema history, turning a potentially dry subject into something that will make you want to unearth your VHS copy of Casablanca. And from “frankly my dear” to “here’s looking at you, kid”, it’ll give you some killer lines with which to exit the party.
Cautionary Tales
Look, you don’t need me to recommend The Rest Is History to you. If you want to have a vague and charismatic understanding of snatches of history, that show – anchored by historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook – is the seminal text. Slightly less ubiquitous is Cautionary Tales, a glossy show hosted by the FT’s Tim Harford, who looks at the moments in history which went wrong, and the teachable moments that can be extracted. Spoiler alert: the history of humanity is the history of mistakes.
The National Trust Podcast
Before it was a hotbed of culture war debate, the National Trust was one of liberal Britain’s bedrock institutions. At north London swingers parties – where driving a car is terribly declassee – membership cards served in place of keys, being swirled in the bowl. And so, there’s little that can make you seem more cosmopolitan that being au fait with the history and portfolio of the National Trust, whose stories are brought vividly to life in its podcast. From the interplay of drag and Shakespeare to the felling of the Sycamore Gap, it’s a show that paints Britain’s social and natural history in appropriately vivid colours.
In Our Time
How Melvyn Bragg – at the ripe old age of 84 – is still going with In Our Time is anyone’s guess. And while many shows with similar ambitions – whether that’s The Rest Is History, HistoryHit, Empire or Past Present Future – have emerged, none has been able to top the sheer bravura of expertise on display on In Our Time. Listen too much and the temptation to start pontificating like a mild-mannered Oxford academic may emerge, but this is a minor side effect to what has been one of the most enriching radio shows – and now podcasts – of the past many decades.
Where Are You Going?
Reminiscent, in some ways, of Alexei Sayle’s Strangers on a Train, Where Are You Going? finds journalist Catherine Carr asking that simple question as a way of jumping into the lives of others. Episodes range in length but are more bite-sized than the average radio segment, meaning you can cram a few in quickly. It’s gentle, friendly, and infinitely curious, and will remind you how to ask questions of people, even if you barely know them.
Griefcast
At the other end of the conversational spectrum is Cariad Lloyd’s acclaimed podcast, Griefcast. In some ways this is a fairly standard celebrity interview show – episodes feature Lloyd’s comedy colleagues like Romesh Ranganathan and Hollie McNish – but one that uses grief, the death of a loved one, as a jumping off point. Lloyd is unafraid to ask the big questions but offers that bluntness in a perfectly calibrated combination with sympathy. Once you’ve scratched the conversational surface – you know what they do for work, where they live, and whether they prefer cats or dogs – Griefcast can be instructive in how to deal with the big, existential questions that we’re increasingly scared to ask.
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